MARVELLOUS WREATH (1903)
aka La guirlande merveilleuse
Article 4753 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-8-2015
Directed by Georges Melies
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Another magic trick short

A magician dressed as a musketeer performs tricks.

Here’s yet another of Melies’s “magic trick” shorts; I imagine I’ll have a few more to watch in the next few months and that’ll be the end of them. There are some noticeable jump cuts on this one; I don’t know if they’re examples of clumsy editing on Melies’s part or if they’re due to missing frames on the surviving prints. The wreath of the title is a transformed jump rope from which various images and characters emerge (including one of those ubiquitous tumbling imps). All in all, this is another typical example of the form, with nothing particularly novel about it to set it apart from the pack.